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This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
4. Ἰωάννης. The Apostle, the son of Zebedee, who (probably afterwards) wrote the Gospel: see Introduction, pp. xl, xlix.
ταῖς ἑπτὰ ἐκκλησίαις. The number of course is symbolical or representative: there were other churches in Asia, e.g. at Colossae and Hierapolis (Col 4:13). But the Seven Churches represent “the Holy Church throughout all the world.” It was very early observed, that St Paul also wrote to seven churches—the Thessalonians, Corinthians, Galatians, Romans, Philippians, Ephesians (?), and Colossians.
ταῖς ἐν τῇ Ἀσίᾳ. The proconsular province of that name. In Act 16:6 “Asia” seems to be used in a still narrower sense, being distinguished from the adjoining districts of Phrygia and Mysia, as well as from the provinces of Galatia and Bithynia; so that it would correspond approximately with the ancient kingdom of Lydia. But as Pergamum was in Mysia, and Laodicea in Phrygia, it seems that here the word is used to include the whole province.
χάρις … καὶ εἰρήνη. So St Paul in all his Epistles to the Seven Churches, Rom 1:7; 1Co 1:3; 2Co 1:2; Gal 1:3; Eph 1:2; Php 1:2; Col 1:2; 1Th 1:1; 2Th 1:2; and so Phm 1:3; Tit 1:4. In other private letters the form varies—χάρις, ἔλεος εἰρήνη, 1Ti 1:2; 2Ti 1:2—as in St John’s second Epistle. St James (Rev 1:1) uses the common secular salutation χαίρειν (cf. Act 15:23): St Peter has “grace and peace” as here, but in his first Epistle does not say from Whom they are to come.
ἀπὸ ὁ. The sacred Name is in the nominative, being treated as indeclinable: as though we should say in English “from He Who is,” &c. For general remarks on the grammatical (or ungrammatical) peculiarities of this book, see Introduction, p. xxxix. Here at least it is plain, that the anomaly is not due to ignorance, but to the writer’s mode of thought being so vigorous that it must express itself in its own way, at whatever violence to the laws of language.
ὁ ὤν καὶ ὁ ἦν καὶ ὁ ἐρχόμενος. A paraphrase of the “Ineffable name” revealed to Moses (Exo 3:14 sq.), which we, after Jewish usage, write “Jehovah” and pronounce “the LORD.” Or, rather perhaps, a paraphrase of the explanation of the Name given to him l. c., “I am That I am”—which is rendered by the LXX. Ἐγώ εἰμι ὁ ὤν, by the Targum of Palestine on Exod. “I am He who is, and who will be.” The same Targum on Deu 32:39 has “Behold now, I am He who Am and Was and Will Be.” Probably ὁ ἑστὼς, ὁ στὰς, ὁ στησόμενος, the Title which according to the Μεγάγη Ἀπόφασις Simon blasphemously assumed to himself, was the paraphrase of the same Name current among Samaritan Hellenists.
ὁ ἦν is doubly ungrammatical. We have not only the article in the nominative after ἀπὸ but a finite verb doing duty for a participle, because γενόμενος or γεγενημένος would be inapplicable to the Self-Existent. Compare the opposition of the “being” of God or Christ, and the “becoming” or “being made” of creatures, in St John’s Gospel, Joh 1:6; Joh 1:8-9, Joh 8:58. Cf. also for another form of the same antithesis, Rev 1:18.
ὁ ἐρχόμενος. Though ἔσομαι is freely used throughout the New Testament, ἐσόμενος is only found once (St Luk 22:49); so ἐρχ. is probably only used to express future time. It certainly does not refer to the Coming of Christ, Who is separately named afterwards. Else “He that is to come” is often used as a familiar and distinctive title of Christ, see Mat 11:3; Mat 21:9; Joh 6:14; Joh 11:27; Heb 10:37; John Ep. II. 7; cf. Ep. I. Rev 2:18, where the same word is pointedly used of Antichrist. With this more general sense we may compare “things to come” Joh 16:13; Joh 18:4, “the wrath to come” 1Th 1:10, and “the world to come” Mar 10:30. As the last was already familiar to the Jewish schools, it may be a question whether it is to be explained from the Coming of God to judge the earth, e.g. Malachi 3; Psalms 98. In any case the threefold name belongs to God—if we are to distinguish—to the Father, rather than to the Trinity.
ἀπὸ τῶν ἑπτὰ πνευμάτων. Cf. Rev 3:1, Rev 4:5, Rev 5:6. If the second of these passages stood alone, it would be possible to understand the name of Seven Chief Angels (see Rev 8:2), but in 6 this is quite impossible, even if we could suppose that here creatures could not only be coupled with the Creator as sources of blessing, but placed between God and Christ. Can we identify “the Seven Spirits,” thus made in some sense coordinate with the Father and the Son, with the Holy Ghost, Who is known to us in His sevenfold operations and gifts, Who perhaps has some sevenfold character in Himself, as some may infer from the passages in this book and from the unquestionably relevant parallels in Zec 3:9; Zec 4:10? This too is difficult: the Seven Spirits are the Eyes not of Him that sitteth upon the Throne, but of the Lamb (cf. Isa 11:2); they are before the Throne, in some sense therefore it would seem external to the Essence of the Most High. It has been generally held since St Augustine, that before the Incarnation the Second Person of the Trinity manifested Himself on earth in a created Angel; if so the Seven Spirits might be a heavenly manifestation of the Third.
ἃ ἐνώπιον τοῦ θρόνου αὐτοῦ. The omission of the copula in a relative clause is not in the style of this book: τῶν ἐνώπιον, the reading of אA, is more in the general style of the book, though it mars the symmetry of the passage.